The investments of just 125 billionaires emit 393 million tonnes of CO2e each year – the equivalent of France – at an individual annual average that is a million times higher than someone in the bottom 90 percent of humanity.

That is to say, if you multiply the emissions of the gasoline sold by ExxonMobil by whatever percentage of ExxonMobile that's in Bill Gate's portfolio, you get an absolutely ridiculous emissions number.

But that seems to assume that if it weren't for those dastardly billionaires investing in oil companies, we'd all be living in 10-minute cities with incredible subways connected by high speed rail, powered entirely by renewables, and heated by geothermal heat pumps. And I honestly don't beleive that.

[-] hglman@lemmy.ml 1 points 10 months ago

Are you not responsible for the things you own?

[-] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Considering that the oil companies bought up the trolley companies, and shut them down, I would argue that without those particular billionaires, we would still be building walkable cities the way we did for centuries, until they decided that cars should be essential, but a luxury at the same time.

Edit: this is specifically applicable to the US

[-] Pipoca@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Sure - blame Rockefeller, Henry Ford, etc. for that. Also e.g. Robert Moses, not that he was a billionaire. But they're all dead. They've been dead.

Is America's suburban sprawl the fault of Bill Gates in particular? Or Bezos, Musk, or Dell?

[-] AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Do they have any investments in the oil sectors? And Musk is absolutely trying to keep cars and kill mass transit. He admitted it. Bezos definitely has invested in making our cities the unwalkable hell scape that the oil companies started.